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9 July 2014

What do I crave from haute couture shows? Grand staging. And Franck Sorbier gives me that.

The song "Paris, j'ai pris perpète", sung live by the young Emilie
Simon, sounded in the recently renovated Salle Wagram when the French
designer Franck Sorbier presented his Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014,
inspired by the style half-life of the world, the nineteenth century.

After she finishes, it's time to sit back. The magic is about to begin.

Entitled "Poems," this collection, consisted of a series of long dresses, a fitted redingote with tumbling ruffles paired with trousers, is sensuously decorated with floral motifs or delicately constructed with hand-painted organza. Franck mixes fabrics, vintage silk, woven embroidered raffia ribbons and then uses his technique of compression fabric to create languorous evening wear that evokes a bygone era.

As in the last fall/winter collection, the theme of the Middle Ages, Franck Sorbier chooses to use rich fabrics manufactured by prestigious companies such as Solstiss House, Declercq Passementiers and even Maison Lesage for some of its parts.

This image of beautiful courtesans, placed in the great hall of the theater, helped transport the audience, at least for a brief moment, in the Paris of the Belle Epoque. The runway is not just straight boring path. Grand piano, chandelliers, and candles placed so that the models walk coreographically, swingin the dress and their hands, some mimicking the romance and melancholia.

This is by far, as I have been observing for quite some time now, the come-back of magic touch haute couture has. It's almost forgotten and left behind, where designers focus merely on clothes, and therefore forgot that haute couture is the highest caste of fashion, and fashion, after all, is beyond clothes. Frank Sorbier Show represents the best of this kind of art form, where the set is constructed as meticulously as the clothes, taking us aback to the golden era of couture.

Franck Sorbier has an extremely cultivated vision in sewing, brimming with references to other artists and their works. This time, the poets of the late nineteenth century that fueled his drawings, often giving a voice to his creativity rather than a strictly commercial vision. The poet has spoken. And the art ressurected.